Ice Princess is a 2005 American figure-skating film directed by Tim Fywell, written by Hadley Davis from a story by Meg Cabot and Davis, and starring Michelle Trachtenberg, Joan Cusack, Kim Cattrall and Hayden Panettiere. The film focuses on Casey Carlyle, a normal teenager who gives up a promising future academic life in order to pursue her new-found dream of being a professional figure skater. The film was released on March 18, 2005. Ice Princess had an unsuccessful performance at the box office, grossing $24 million in the United States during its theatrical run against a production budget of $25 million.

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Casey Carlyle (Michelle Trachtenberg), a very smart and talented science student, plans to pursue a scholarship to Harvard University. For the scholarship, Casey must present a personal summer project about physics. While watching a figure skating competition with her mathematically inclined friend Ann, Casey realizes that her favorite childhood hobby, ice skating, would make a perfect project. She decides to try to improve her own skating by applying physics and what she has discovered from watching other skaters.

She becomes proficient and skips two levels to become a junior skater. She helps junior skaters Gennifer "Gen" Harwood (Hayden Panettiere), Tiffany Lai, and Nikki Fletcher (Kirsten Olson) improve their skating. Torn between her Harvard dream and her growing love of skating, Casey has difficulty juggling schoolwork, skating, and a part-time job. Joan (Joan Cusack) Carlyle, Casey's mother, attempts to prevent Casey from skating due to her declining school performance. Meanwhile, tension arises between Casey's coach Tina Harwood (Kim Cattrall), a disgraced former skater, and Gen's mother.

Tina, who manages the rink where Casey trains, puts Gen on a strict training program. Frustrated by the new restrictions, Gen quits after Tina attempts to sabotage Casey's performance during a competition. Casey declines the Harvard scholarship competition to devote herself to skating to Joan's dismay. Despite her betrayal, Casey asks Tina to be her personal coach and help her train for sectionals. Their collaboration is a successful one.

At the sectionals, Casey's mind is not fully set on the competition and falls while attempting a triple Salchow. She is surprised to discover that Joan has arrived for the sectionals. Inspired, Casey gives a highly rated artistic performance. The sectionals ends with Nikki going to the nationals and Casey becoming the runner-up. Gen's brother, Teddy (Trevor Blumas), gives Casey flowers to congratulate her, and they kiss. Later, Joan and Tina playfully arguing about how many college courses Casey should take, discussing Teddy and Casey's budding romance, Casey's sponsors, and Casey's future in figure skating.

Blumas said that he was put on hold for two months during the audition process, and that there had been “a lot of switch-overs with the directors”.[2] Blumas ended up playing Teddy as a sort of father figure.[2] He began training to drive a Zamboni soon after arriving in Toronto; according to him, he later ended up smoothing the ice on some mornings at the rink where they were shooting.[2] Panettiere did much of her own skating, including a fast spin seen at the end of the film.[3] Trachtenberg trained for eight months, including the time they were filming (during which time she says she worked twenty-hour days).[4] She had to be on the ice longer than most of the other actors as she was one of the few adults on the film.[5] She had stunt doubles to handle the falls and some of the complex moves,[6] although Trachtenberg did learn a specific move that could not be done by a stunt double as the differences in their build would be apparent. She sustained some injuries while working on the film.[5] According to Trachtenberg, a mistake was made in one of the physics formulas her character recites, which was later fixed; a shot of the back of her head was used and the correct term was looped in.[6] Trachtenberg described the film as “not a Disney kitschy movie” and was somewhat apprehensive of the idea of a sequel for fear of belittling the original.[7] Cusack noted that the relationship between Casey and her mother had already been well-developed in the script, but said that it generated a good deal of discussion during the production, and Cusack ultimately described her role as "meaningful" in terms of the acting and also how it related to her personally.[8]

In its opening weekend, the film grossed $6,807,471 million in 2,501 theaters in the United States and Canada, ranking #4 at the box office, behind The Ring Two, Robots and The Pacifier. By the end of its run, Ice Princess grossed $24,402,491 domestically and $3,243,000 internationally, totaling $27,645,491 worldwide.[11]